This blog documents the preservation of the Brookwood Phone Box.
The kiosk was decommissioned by British Telecom in early 2009, and acquired by the local council to be preserved for the village.
A small team of villagers set about restoring the phone box, and then preserving it for future generations.
You may contact the author at contact@brookwood-expo.org.uk if you would like advice on restoring your kiosk.

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Sunday, 9 May 2010

How to Glaze a Kiosk

Seeing as we have gone to great lengths to re-glaze the kiosk in the most original way possible, and just in case anyone reading this blog is about to restore their own kiosk we thought we would give an overview of how we put the glass in. Originally, cast iron frames were used. It is still possible to get these, but they are around £16 each, and when you need 24 of them, it quickly mounts up. We're not trying to win awards here, so we decided steel frames would suffice.

In addition, we decided early on to fit laminated glass rather that toughened glass. The theory being that busting laminate glass isn't as much fun as toughened glass as toughened glass shatters, whereas laminate glass cracks. So we thought that perhaps vandals would be less likely to break the windows. Laminate glass presented us with an additional problem which is the brass pins used to hold the glass in wouldn't quite fit due to the extra thickness of the glass.

Our solution was to make our own glazing frames with the holes drilled in the correct position for our glass. The final difference between how the kiosks were originally glazed and the way we have done ours is our use of silicone as a sealant rather than putty.

The pictures here show a bead of silicone being applied to the kiosk frame edge. We then push the glass in place, and apply another line of silicone to provide a watertight seal. Then the glazing frame is put in place, and finally the brass pins are dropped through the holes, and lightly tapped in place. These pins go through the bottom of glazing frame, through the kiosk and then through the top of the next glazing frame below.

Once they've all been done, you end up with a complete side glazed, a bit like the picture here. The glass in the picture here still needs a decent clean, there are remnants of masking tape which we'll remove during the week. We have started glazing the third side and by the time we finished had fitted three panes. We will easily finish this by next Sunday.

Tonight we have been invited to an inteview about the kiosk on Radio Wey which will be really cool.

P.S. Update @ 21:26 - The interview tonight on Radio Wey was really interesting, DJ Jon was very good and made sure we were at ease. We covered lots about the kiosk and the community aspect of it. He even dug out Blondie's Hanging on the Telephone to launch the interview. Luckily a recording of the interview will be made available to us and we'll publish it at some point.

4 comments:

Hi Kevin, Could you tell me if you have a drawing for your steel frames and if you know where to have them made? We are about to start restoring a box adopted by our parish council (nearby) and would be grateful if you could answer a few questions.Thank you, David

Hello Kevin- I have really enjoyed this blog. I am in the US and acquired a red phone box in July. It is solid but needs sanding, paint, etc. I do not have glazing frames and they are very expensive to buy and ship from the UK. Do you have any information to share about how you made glazing frames? I would appreciate any information. Thanks-Tim